Cleveland school district officials talk about their goals for improving graduation rates over the next few years. The graduation rate has risen 17 percent over the last several years for a district that used to have the lowest rate in Ohio.

(Patrick O'Donnell/The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Hey students at Glenville High School, downtown is watching you.

You too, students at Rhodes or John Marshall or John Addams high schools.

The people that run the Cleveland school district want you and your classmates to graduate, so they're not just leaving that up to your teachers, principals and guidance counselors.

Administrators of the district's downtown office are keeping tabs on every high school student, how many credits they have, which Ohio Graduation Tests they have passed or how many points toward graduation they have on new state end-of-course exams.

And they can look each of you up by name to see if you are on-track or off-track to graduate.

It's all to find ways to get more of you to graduate and continue the district's steady climb up from having the worst graduation rate in the state. Just a few years ago, the Cleveland schools graduated just over half of its students, giving it the lowest graduation rate of the more than 600 districts in Ohio.

Now, the district graduates just under 70 percent of students and has passed four other districts, leaving Euclid and Warrensville Heights at the state's bottom. That 17-percent increase is the largest and most trumpeted gain for the district as it campaigns to renew 2012's tax increase for schools on Nov. 8.

"2013 is when we really got serious about this work as a district," said Karen Thompson, the district's deputy chief of curriculum and instruction. The graduation rate had already seen a few increases before then, Thompson said, but the district had to focus hard to keep the increases going.

So it started tracking progress of every student. And it set up a group of principals, data analysts, and administrators who meet regularly to set goals for the coming years and then track whether students can meet them.

The database of all students, which can be sorted by students' race or sex, or by the type of school (magnet, college-prep, vocational) lets the district see trends and find ways to solve them.

The panel of administrators also looks at the graduation rates at every high school, closely watching which are going up or down and trying to sort out what strategies schools should replicate or abandon.

Much of that panel's work fits what you would expect from a guidance counselor at a school, who makes sure students are on a path to graduate and takes the right classes. But this adds to those efforts across the more than 30 high schools in the district.

"It can't rest with just one person," Thompson said.

Michelle Pierre-Farid, the district's chief academic officer, said the district now provides support across the district to principals and guidance counselors to help nudge students toward graduation.

Just last week, for example, the panel reviewed letters to send to all high school parents about state graduation requirements, instead of leaving that to each school.

Even more important, she said was creating a set of tools for schools to use depending on what seems to be blocking a student from staying on track.

Though students could always choose to take classes in online charter schools, they would have to withdraw from the district and enroll in those schools. FuelEd lets them do that work while staying enrolled in their local high school.For students who need to pass classes they failed or missed, the district has contracted with Fuel Education (FuelEd) to provide online classes to recover those credits, or "blended" classes with a mix of online and classroom work.

The district also uses its database to see if students with strong grades are not doing well on state tests they need to graduate. For those students, the district now connects them with test preparation help or counseling fort test anxiety.

Students who have trouble with both their classes and state tests in a subject receive different help, as do students that are bored with standard classes and need accelerated work.

Pierre-Farid said the data helped show that female students at John Addams High School were not being pushed along as well as males, who have extra motivation and counseling through a Closing The Achievement Gap aimed at minority males. So the school, she said, just started one for women.

Some of the biggest gains have come at East Technical High School on E. 55th Street, which serves the extremely poor Central neighborhood. Its 60.3 percent graduation rate is still graded as an F by the state, but is vastly better than the 36 percent it had just a few years ago.

"Growth and graduation is kind of the mantra," said Co-Principal Temujin Taylor.

East Tech's challenges include a student body that constantly changes because students and families move. At times, said co-principal Paul Hoover, the students the school expects to start 9th grade in May will change by 50 percent by September. During the year, students switch to charters or move to other neighborhoods and schools and vanish, or return a few months later.

By 10th grade students tend to be established in a high school and stay, but catch-up work has to start sooner than that.

The school now looks at students' 8th grade scores to start them on special help right away in 9th grade. This year, 65 percent of 9th graders were behind where they should be in at least one subject.

The school has also extended tutoring by City Year to more students to get as many students as possible. And it hired its own data coordinator to track students' progress and weaknesses right there at the school.

"We always ask, 'Where is the student's real deficit," Hoover said. "Where do we need to grow the scholar?"

Small amounts of the district's gains come from carefully checking the data it reports to the state. Pierre-Farid said a percentage point or two of that 17 points probably comes from catching mistakes like students who graduated and weren't reported to the state, or who had truly withdrawn to a charter school or other district.

But that's not a gain that keeps coming year after year. That may have provided a boost one year, but the checks each year now simply maintain the correct tally.

It's the panel's work at identifying ways to help students learn, pass and graduate that she is most proud of.

"This is one example of where we buckle down and do what's right for children," Pierre-Farid told that group recently. "This is an area that is a gateway for life. This is the work to get children over the line."